Tuesday, February 24, 2009

F8: part five, epilogue

It's nearly done, so it's now more a near-failure. Or just a Disappointment. I had hight hopes and thought my skills could hack. However, there were too many things that I didn't, couldn't see until it was too late. Not enough experience... yet.

Here's the front:

FIP.

The underside photographs well, but it doesn't look smooth and 'in scale' enough when viewed in real life. The landing gear scratchbuild turned out pretty good, but I didn't plan ahead for the brake lines and they just sort of end at the wheel well now and don't actually go anywhere.

You can also see a gap between the engine cowling and the fuselage. This was not there in the numerous test-fittings I did, but when I went to put the cowling on for final assembly, it would not go on any farther.

The oil cooler flaps turned out pretty nicely, though.

Here's the back. The paint job looks decent here, but up close the brush-applied future has some uneven drying. Academy's decals also don't like sitting in Future a much as the Tamiya decals did. What you can see that I like is a small, totally scratchbuilt bomb cart. I'm pretty proud of that mediocre thing. I also like the padeyes on the top of the bomb.

Here it is close up.

So, did I waste my time? No. I learned a lot. I learned to use photo-etch details; I learned a lot about scratch building; I learned that pastels don't like gloss finishes and stick better to matte; I learned about planning; I learned about using cyanoacrylate (super) glue;

Did I waste my money? Nope. I got a good price and I got it local. The only wasting feeling I feel is that I may have wasted the kit. I don't think the kit nor the detail pack is available any more. It's a shame, it's a really nice subject.

2 comments:

it looks quite cool though. And those scratch built things are very nice! As for the gap, don't you got any filler? Or were you afraid it would look even worse? I'm going to get paint for my planes that I got left to build (a B26 90% finished, 2 mig29's and the orljonok..I have to find out how to get the engine back, because it fell inside!!)